C.S. Lewis and Psychology 

C.S. Lewis and Psychology

C.S. Lewis was a great Christian apologist, and a powerful writer. I think what makes his writing powerful is that he focussed on psychology--why do people do what they do, and why are they more likely to find what they are looking for with Christ than in the way they are living now? I'm pretty sure he was a very good if not great psychologist. One friend of mine said once that if you encountered Lewis before you encountered Nietzsche, you would be inclined to think Lewis was right.

In Pilgrim's Regress, Lewis presents a character a bit like himself who is drawn to find a "perfect island" of which he has had only glimpses. The island is so perfect that the longing for it is sweeter than the satisfaction of any other desire. As Lewis says in his introductory remarks, if nature makes nothing in vain, it makes sense that such a powerful longing is pointing us towards something. The book makes it clear that the goal of the longing appears as different things to different people. The main point is that it is something like perfect happiness, for which we long, and of which we get intimations, especially as children (when we are more naive or open to such things).

I think Lewis is right that such a phenomenon is fairly common. I'm not sure what actually happens in childhood, or if we remember it correctly, but as adults we look back and think we glimpsed, and even in a way enjoyed, perfect happiness for fleeting moments. (Obviously this might not be true of absolutely miserable childhoods). Update: I think "le pays bleu" is the French expression for childhood which captures this perfection and innocence.

The phenomenon is familiar in songs such as "Over the Rainbow," and Stevie Wonder's "I Wish." I think it is expressed beautifully in a Lauryn Hill song from a great album, "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill." The song is "Every Ghetto, Every City." There is a kind of chorus: "Every ghetto, every city, and suburban place I've been; make me recall my days in the New Jerusalem." "New Jerusalem" clearly refers to childhood, at least as Hill remembers it as an adult; key phrases are "we thought we'd all live forever," and "Unaware of what we didn't have."

I think much of political philosophy takes its starting point from human desires for perfection: justice, noble deeds, living by divine truths, and indeed happiness. The massive problem is not simply an adult realization that we as individuals cannot achieve all that we have (at one time or another) wanted. This is the problem to which Lewis says he has the solution--God can do for mere humans what they cannot do for themselves. (See Lauryn Hill's
newer song
"Oh Jerusalem"). The deeper problem is that the things we want are logically incompatible; to succeed in one is to fail in another, or to leave behind anything we recognize as humanity. One way to put this is: there may be happy beings in Heaven, but it seems unlikely they are human beings in any meaningful sense, so their happiness is hardly relevant to us.

I think the account of justice in Plato's Republic is highly relevant here. I will try briefly to recall some of what I learned in grad school, and subject Lewis to the kind of treatment he might get from a student of Socrates.

More later.